Re-forming the Past: The Medieval Romance Book as a Dynamic Site of Memory.
- Author/Editor
- Ensley, Mimi.
- Title
- Re-forming the Past: The Medieval Romance Book as a Dynamic Site of Memory.
- Published
- Ensley, Mimi. Re-forming the Past: The Medieval Romance Book as a Dynamic Site of Memory. Ph.D. Dissertation. University of Notre Dame, 2019. vi, 315 pp.; illus. Dissertation Abstracts International A81.09(E). Fully accessible via ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global.
- Review
- From Ensley's abstract: "this dissertation argues that for the producers and readers of the medieval romance, the genre and the books that preserved it were a means by which readers could both travel to the past and meditate on their connections with that past. Combining bibliographical analysis, reception history, literary interpretation, and theories of cultural memory and historiography, this project demonstrates that polytemporal material objects allowed readers to experience both present and past in directions that unsettle the period divisions foundational to much modern scholarship . . . . Chapter Four uses Thomas Berthelette's 1532 folio edition of John Gower's 'Confessio Amantis' alongside William Shakespeare's reimagining of Gower in his late romance 'Pericles' to explore the monumentality of fourteenth-century authors and texts in early-modern literary cultures. I argue that while Berthelette's edition buries Gower in a monumental folio, separating the medieval author from a work deemed timeless, Shakespeare's play both recognizes Gower's alterity and simultaneously insists on his presence in living cultural memory." Ensley also comments recurrently on Gower's early modern reputation elsewhere in her study.
- Date
- 2019
- Gower Subjects
- Influence and Later Allusion
Facsimiles, Editions, and Translations
Confessio Amantis